Grotto Railway
Grotto and tunnel railways are rides that can be seen as the forerunners of modern ghost trains and themed rides and in which visitors are driven past individual scenes, mostly taken from fairy tale treasures, in closed or curtained rooms.
The first grotto railways were built around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: Since 1895 there has been a diorama railroad in the Wiener Wurstelprater , in which visitors can go on virtual journeys e.g. B. were sent to the Adriatic, in 1898 the first electrically operated grotto railway was also put into operation on the Prater, in 1906 the Linz grotto railway started operating with numerous fairy tale scenes .
A “real cave train” is the electrically operated visitor train with which visitors are driven into the karst cave of Postojna .
Well-known grotto railways
The Viennese Grottenbahn Zum Walfisch by Hugo Pilz, built in 1898, had 18 themed rooms with sound from a large concert organ. This organ played opera and operetta excerpts which, among others, inspired the young Hitler during his years in Vienna. Even Franz West reported on the appreciation of this instrument among listeners. In 1926, the Zum Walfisch cave railway served as the backdrop for the film The Pratermizzi . The film was rediscovered in 2005 and is considered to be one of the most interesting Austrian films of the silent era; the ride through the grotto train is associated there with a journey into the depths of human souls.
Even today there is an old Viennese grotto train in the Prater.
The (then still :) Märchengrottenbahn in Graz started in 1968 with access from Schlossbergplatz in the air raid tunnels from the Second World War . A direct current locomotive pulled 5 open wagons (built in 1968), each with two benches for 2 people each, through the dolomite cliffs of the Graz Schloßberg . To the turning point and back, 20 people passed 34 designed fairy tale and other scenes on a 2 km journey. With Peter Rosegger's Waldheimat there was a Styrian, with "Engelbert the dwarf carpenter" a small-scale local reference - to carpenter Tscheschner, Sackstrasse. The railway, which had been in operation almost continuously with brief interruptions, temporarily closed at the end of 2011 due to the need for renovation. During the renovation under Jörg Ehtreiber, director of the Graz Children's Museum , the tracks were changed from 500 mm to 600 mm for the adjoining collection of 60 mining locomotives and 230 wagons in the mountain. This largest underground collection in the world was previously - 30 years - not accessible to the public for reasons of fire protection. In a later development step, these should also be made accessible as a mining railway museum. The new " Grazer Märchenbahn " opened in November 2014. On the approx. 35-minute journey through Graz's Schloßbergstollen, visitors discover new fairytale worlds in 22 stations and bring them to life through various interactions. Incidentally, it must not be confused with the Graz Schlossbergbahn . Between 2000 and 2010, next to the fairy tale (grotto) train, an inclined tunnel was opened for pedestrians as a passage through the Schloßberg, the "Dom im Berg" was blasted out as an event hall, a vertical Schloßberg lift and barrier-free horizontal access to the cathedral was created.
The Linzer Grottenbahn is located on the Pöstlingberg in one of the fortification towers that surround the city of Linz as a Maximilian fortification ring. An electrically powered train in the shape of a dragon travels on a circular path in the outer ring of the historic fortified tower through a fairytale world inhabited by dwarves.
A cave train has been running in the Postojna Caves in Slovenia since 1872.
Scenic Railways , particularly popular in the USA , included railways such as Magic Mountain and the nozzle spiral from 1957.
The electric hell train from the Hitzig company from 1925 already had numerous elements of the later ghost train.
subjects
Popular themes of the grotto railways have always been fairy tales and travel. In 1904 the Bothmann company built a submarine tunnel track, and in 1913 a planetary track. The themes of the railways often corresponded to the well-known film themes of their time. In the 1940s and 1950s, trips into the jungle were particularly popular, later space and science fiction . Since the railways were often used for decades, conversions and redesigns took place.
Web links
- Alfred Toth, A Brief History of Ghost Trains - Ghost, Jungle and Grotto Trains, 2008, illustrated (PDF file; 735 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 28, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://schaustellermuseum.blogspot.com/2006/04/hitler-und-der-wiener-prater.html
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://www.stadt-graz.at/ausfluege/maerchenbahn-grottenbahn-graz.html Graz Märchenbahn - Grottenbahn, Excursions, Graz City Portal, Ing.Christian Glösl, accessed on February 14, 2014
